As I mentioned forever ago, my boyfriend and I went to Madison to eat sushi for the first time! The morning car ride up was gorgeous.

The city of Madison is beautiful. My camera couldn't quite capture the beauty of the place.

While waiting for the restaurant to open (and since I had to pee like crazy!) we walked around inside the capital building for awhile. It's quite an architectural feat!

The inside is filled with decorative stone columns and archways, complete with intricate mosaics in the center dome. I highly recommend visiting it just once in order to see the decor.

When 11 o'clock rolled around we were pretty hungry! We headed to Red Sushi and Grill, our sushi restaurant of choice. Clicking the photo will take you straight to the homepage, which is also where I got the photo from. There are menus on the website too!

Being new to sushi, we each got a sushi roll lunch that contained six sushi rolls of the chef's choice, along with a roll of our choosing. My boyfriend got some sort of Cajun spicy roll while I ordered a California roll. We waited excitedly for the sushi to arrive and enjoyed the swanky interior of the building.

Here it is!

I have never eaten raw fish before! It was so interesting!

The actual taste of the sushi was good, but my brain had a hard time dealing with the fact that it was raw! The plate itself was very beautifully put together. I found out later after showing a friend that the little round things on the sushi were fish eggs! Holy-cadoly!

I ended up eating four of my sushi rolls and nearly all of my California rolls. As I kept eating the raw sushi my brain, mouth, and stomach engaged in a constant battle. The pieces were also a little large so it took me awhile to chew and swallow. I ate almost all the ginger.

During my last California roll my stomach was a bit unhappy so I decided to do something I ended up regretting terribly: I covered it in wasabi.

Why did I think that would help? I have no clue!!! My mouth was on FIRE. I tried to eat it but I started crying from the heat in the middle of the restaurant and had to spit it out. After that I had to hold my mouth open forever before I could even think about trying to drink water. Be warned. Wasabi is hot, even if you think you know how to handle spicy food! Wasabi will give it to you!!

After sushi we went exploring for a bit around Madison. We went inside a bank that wasn't just a bank; it had a hair salon, two restaurants, a grocery store, credit place, and a whole bunch of other things I've never seen in a bank before!

We also took a trip to the UW Madison campus bookstore. It was fun perusing the endless aisles of art supplies the interesting assortment of books and activities (such as themed magnetic poetry kits). We almost got a set of bamboo brushes and ink, inspired on the spot for a project, but decided to invest at a later time. Since campus bookstores don't actually have a lot of books, we made a quick stop to Barnes and Noble before hitting the road.

The ride back alternated between beautiful blue cloudy skies and rain.